Over on the Dry Side (12 page)

He demolished the rest of the bacon and wiped the blade of his bowie on his sleeve, then sheathed it. “Come daylight, you an' me an' that girl can meet up. I know a way off this mountain that'll bring us to her before they get there.”

“We'd better,” Owen said quietly. “That's a bad outfit.”

The old man studied him. “You kin to that Chantry feller had the ranch?”

“I am. Did you know him?”

“Know him? I should smile. I knowed him. Why, I rode right up to these mountains with him and helped lay the timbers of his cabin on the rampart. I knew him. Good man.”

Owen Chantry stared. This gray old man had known Clive Chantry.

Chapter 11

O
WEN CHANTRY HAD seen too much to doubt too much. He was intelligent. He had a healthy vein of skepticism, but he had traveled too widely and read too much not to understand that the seemingly impossible could happen.

As the old man ate and talked, Chantry watched him thoughtfully. The old man was quick and active, also very thin, wiry, and strong.

The oldest people Chantry had known all lived at relatively high altitudes, where many illnesses simply do not exist because the germs that spread them are not active in that cold, clear air. Or perhaps there were simply fewer people to harbor the germs.

“If you know a way to head them off, we'd better get going early,” said Chantry.

The old man looked over his shoulder. “Worried about her, ain't you? Well, I'd be too. Them as follers her are a mighty poor lot, a sorry lot.”

Chantry pushed a few heavier sticks into the fire, then stretched out. He was tired…he hadn't realized how tired.

Yet he slept, and well. It was still dark when he heard the old man breaking sticks. When Owen raised up, the old fellow glanced over. “Seen you had coffee,” he said. “Ain't had much lately. Git some chicory in the woods, time to time, but it ain't the same.”

Chantry sat up, shook out his boots carefully to be sure no wanderers had taken shelter there during the night, and tugged them on. He didn't know this old man and preferred to make the coffee himself.

The fire blazed up brightly. Chantry glanced around. It was a perfect camp, sheltered from the wind, partly sheltered from rain, with wood and water.

When he had made coffee and started some bacon, he rolled his bed. The old man went about his business as if alone, taking his horse to water and returning to pack up. Owen did the same, and when they had eaten he kicked earth over the fire. When Owen would have dumped out the coffee, the old man insisted on keeping the grounds, wrapping them carefully in a piece of well-tanned hide.

“Ain't tasted coffee in a spell,” he said. “Might be a long time agin. Out here I don't throw nothin' away 'til it's plumb used up.”

They started out. The old man led them at a good fast walk down a very steep trail for a hundred yards or so, then at a canter along a gradual slope.

The shot came from afar. A single shot, and then silence. The old man pulled up sharply. Chantry's eyes swept the country in a quick, measuring glance.

All was still. There was no movement, no further sound. The shot seemed to have come from somewhere before them, but in the clear air the sound might have carried for some distance.

Chantry started forward again, the only sound the swishing of the horses' hoofs in the grass. He held his rifle in his right hand, ready for use.

Then right before them, he saw the tracks of several hard-ridden horses. Grass was torn and earth kicked up where the hoofs had dug in. Men riding that hard were going straight to an objective, and not in doubt about it.

Suddenly, half a mile away and racing across a meadow, he saw three riders, two bay horses and a buckskin, running all out.

The old man spoke up suddenly. “Chantry, if I cut out, don't you worry none. I'll be around about.”

“Just don't get in the way,” Owen replied. “You do what you're of a mind to.”

“What you figurin' on?”

“I'm going in and get that girl out of there.”

“You see her?”

“No.…But look at that rocky knoll yonder? The one covered with aspens. There's been a blowdown hit that slope. See the dead trees? My guess is she's there, trying to make a stand.”

“Yeah,” the old man said. “They've left one man to pin her down while they try to outflank her. Don't you go gittin' yourself killed. I ain't much hand at goin' agin three, four men single-handed. If'n I was huntin' 'em, now…”

“Hunt them then, but stay out of range. When I go in there I don't want to think about where else my bullets are going.”

Chantry walked his horse forward, sitting straight up in the saddle, missing nothing. He was reminded of a time during the war when he was outside Chattanooga. He had led a cavalry charge against a crossroads position, and they had come out of the trees, just like this, unseen by the men in position below.

But this was war of another kind, and he commanded no company. There was only himself and one old man of whom he knew nothing.

He began to trot, his eyes searching for the fourth man.

He heard a shot and saw a puff of smoke from the knoll under the aspens. Almost instantly the hidden marksman replied, and then Chantry saw him, hunkered down behind a mound of earth and brush, lifting his rifle for another shot.

Owen wheeled his horse, the packhorse following, and went in at a dead run.

The man heard him coming too late. Wheeling around, he drew up his rifle for a shot. Yet the turn and the lift of the gun were too fast. The rifle went off before it was fairly lined up, and the next instant Owen rode in up on him, firing with his rifle downward, shooting with one hand.

The man jerked back, spun and dropped. He started to get up and Chantry reined in, turning in a small circle around him.

He'd been hit, all right. Blood stained his shirt and pants right about the beltline on the right side.

“You played hell!” he said.

The man was a rough-looking fellow, but unfrightened.

“You surely bought yourself a ticket!” he said angrily. “The old man will have your scalp for this.”

“Does it take four of you to round up one little girl?” Chantry asked.

“Are you Owen Chantry?”

“I am, and that girl is to be left alone. You understand?”

The man spat. “You better tell them yonder. They ain't about to leave her alone. They done had enough of her uppity ways. Who does she think she is?”

“Why don't you ask Mowatt?” Chantry suggested.

The man spat again. “Hell, Mowatt don't know what's good for him. That girl ain't no kin.”

The man was clasping his leg tightly, but even as he talked the initial shock was wearing off. The pain was growing and he squinted his eyes against it, not wanting to let Chantry see.

Out of respect for the man, Chantry turned away. But as he rode off he kept an eye on him to see that he didn't reach for a gun. But the man was wholly concerned with his wound and didn't again look up.

Chantry rode forward, and there were no shots. As he mounted a small knoll he glimpsed Marny's horse, deep inside a clump of trees.

“Marny?” he called softly.

“Come on in,” she spoke just loud enough for him to hear. “Although you've come to a poor place.”

He rode in through the trees and swung down. She got up from a tangle of fallen logs. There was a smudge on her cheek and the skirt she wore was rumpled.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“So far, but there's still three more, and they'll be back.”

He glanced around quickly. The clump of trees was no more than fifty or sixty feet across, any way you looked, and there were a good many deadfalls and several clumps of boulders. The field of fire in most directions was good.

“They'll come. But when they find out you're not alone, they'll pull out. Then we'll have to run for it.”

She glanced at him. “You needn't, you know. I can get along.”

She thought again how cold his face was. It was hardboned and strong, but there was little warmth in it until he smiled. There was loneliness in it, too, yet nothing about him invited sympathy. This was a man who had been much alone, with no experience at sharing feelings—probably because there had been nobody to share them with.

“You've always been alone, haven't you?” she asked.

He shrugged, watching the timber across the meadow. “It's better alone than with somebody you don't trust.”

“You've never learned to share your feelings.”

“Who wants my feelings? A man alone keeps his feelings to himself.”

She saw a movement among the leaves. “There's somebody over there.”

“I see.”

“Are you going to shoot?”

“Not until I see what I'm shooting at. Anybody who shoots blind is a fool. Something moving in the brush may be your best friend. Whenever I squeeze a trigger I know what I'm shooting at.”

“But we don't have any friends here!”

“There's Doby. And his Pa.…And that old man I met last night.”

“Old man?”

“He knows you. He's got a telescope, and there's not much he doesn't know.…He's also got a Sharps fifty.”

“How old is he?”

“Looks like he was here first and they built the mountains around him. But he's spry…he's mighty spry, and canny.”

There was a yell off to their right, and when Owen turned they were coming…all three of them. They were well scattered and coming in at a dead run.

Chantry lifted his rifle like a man shooting ducks, and he fired left, middle, and right.

There was no wasted motion, and no emotion. He just lifted the rifle and came down on his targets, held up the merest second and squeezed off his shots.

The first man veered sharply and dropped his rifle, then fell down the slope and into the bottom. The second man dropped from the saddle, hit the grass, and lay there. The third wheeled his horse wildly and tried to escape. Chantry let him have three good jumps while he held his fire. Then he shot.

“I held high,” he explained, apologetically. “I might have shot through him and killed a good horse.”

The horse and rider went racing away across the field, but the man rode limply, one arm dangling.

“Only the horse? Not the man?”

“The man came a-hunting trouble. He rode after a lone woman and he brought plenty of help, so whatever he gets is too good for him. The horse didn't have a choice. He was ridden into this fight, so there's no use for it to suffer.” Chantry loaded his rifle again. “If you want to dance, you pay the fiddler. Only in this dance,” he smiled at her, “in this dance the devil does the fiddling and you pay in blood.”

He glanced around the rocky, tree-covered knoll. “I like this place. When you pick a place to make a stand, you do all right.”

The last echoes of the firing had died away. Not the faintest smell of powder smoke remained. It was as if nothing had happened. Only the body lying out there in the grass said otherwise, only a dark patch against the green.

It would still be like this when they were gone. The few scars they left would be erased quietly. Even if left unburied the body would be disposed of in time, and after many years only a few buttons and perhaps a buckle would remain. Men would come, would pass, and where they walked the grass would grow again, and the forest, and there would be no signs of their passing.

“We'd better go,” he said. “There's been enough of this.”

“They won't stop, you know. Mac Mowatt is losing control. They will want blood now. They'll come after you, Owen, and they'll come after me. But it's the treasure they want.”

“Treasure!” he was irritated. “The treasure is out there,” he waved a hand. “The treasure is the country itself.”

He helped her to the saddle, then mounted and picked up the leadline of his packhorse. They rode out and down across the meadow.

Suddenly the old man came down from a clump of spruces across the way. He rode up to them and reined around, staring angrily at Chantry. “Might o' left me one!” he said. “You cleaned house 'fore I got my fifty up. I d'clare, I never seen such shootin'. You an' me, we could make us a passel out on the buffalo grass.”

Owen Chantry led away to the south. He was withdrawn, not wanting to talk. Fighting had been a way of life for as long as he could recall, but he wanted no more of it.

Sensing his mood, Marny said nothing. Against the far-off horizon the Sleeping Ute Mountain bulked large and, nearer, the great shelf of Mesa Verde thrust out, sharp against the sky.

“Do you know what they say?” she spoke suddenly. “We had a half-breed Navajo with us for a while. He said there were ghost cities up there…houses, walls, rooms, all empty and still.”

Owen's eyes turned toward the bulk of the great plateau. “Could be,” he said, “though it's a less favored place than the mountains we've come from.”

The old man disagreed. “Depends on what you're lookin' for. If you're in a country where there's savage Indians, fighters like the 'Paches and the Navajos, then maybe you want a place you can defend.”

Owen Chantry offered no comment. He had been looking far off, and now he drew up on the edge of a slight shelf that offered a good view to the west.

Far off against the sky a slim column of smoke was rising toward the sky. Chantry swore softly, bitterly.

Startled, Marny said, “What is it, Owen?”

“They've fired the ranch,” he said. He pointed to the smoke. “It's burning…or has been.”

“What about the Kernohans?” she asked, suddenly frightened for them.

“I don't know,” he said. “I just don't know.”

Chapter 12

P
A WAS JUST a-gettin' hitched up when I seen 'em comin'. He had the harness on when I glimpsed the dust on the trail, an' I yelled at him.